


pretty as pie

by softestrichie



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Domestic, M/M, One Shot, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, eddie always knows how to make him feel lovely!, richie’s had an acne breakout and his baby’s there to help, theyre in their late teens id say
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-23 18:41:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20013022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softestrichie/pseuds/softestrichie
Summary: eddie helps his boyfriend look after his skin (and his heart too).





	pretty as pie

**Author's Note:**

> hey bubbas this is a super old drabble i really like that i did for a tumblr anonymous back in spring. it was based on the prompt **‘how do you get your skin to be so soft?’** and i only just realised i hadn’t posted it on here/it’s no longer on tumblr ‘cause i deleted my old blog! also just wanted to letchu all know im still here and more reddie obsessed than ever, just been the most busiest and happiest goose the last few months!!!!

Richie’s nose is shaped like a crescent moon with a crook in the bridge, and he’s got pimples tucked in all its folds; little beak, that’s what Eddie calls it. His boyfriend’s fingers are chasing down the slope of it on this Sunday morning. Come peeking out from under the funny pig-print bedspread Richie’s grandma had bought ‘em, before Richie even knows he’s awake, and give that nose they love so much a nice, long, sea-spray stroke. ‘I love you’. That’s what it always means.

“Jesus Pleezus, he’s conscious,” comes Eddie’s croaky giggle, as two pretty shoulders and a curly head follow his fingers up out of bed. Richie’s been sitting with his back arched for the last half an hour. His fingernails are on fire - nervous itches, whenever he’s got a lot of energy, he’s all alight with nervous itches - and his eyes are open all the way, which is unusual. Most Sunday mornings (and the other mornings he can get away with), Richie will stay with his face pressed into the little pouch of Eddie’s tummy until gone noon, when that tummy will inevitably start rumbling, and he’ll be hopping out in his bright green undies to make the pair of them scrambled eggs. But today, he is awake. And itchy. Very itchy. 

Eddie comes butterflying forwards to take those itchin’ hands in his own, pressing two or three kisses into his knobbly knuckles; Richie gives four back on Eddie’s chin. Copycat. “Baby, you’re buzzin’,” Eddie says, holding the pair of hands in his own up under Richie’s crescent nose to show him. “Are you having a restless day? Shall we put the music on in the kitchen, getcha legs moving?” 

Richie shakes his slightly stringy hair back to show Eddie both cheeks and nods. “Weird day,” he says gently. 

This is not terribly unusual, by Richie and Eddie’s gentle little standards; Richie has a lot of ‘weird days’. Some of them are when his energy’s climbing up higher than the telephone lines, and he’ll be curled in a headstand, wearing purple lipstick and reciting the twelve times-table all before 8am. Others are when he’s grumpy and slow and won’t get out of bed, and he’ll burst into tears when Eddie asks if he wants green or yellow socks for school. The worst days. But on this day, Richie just seems more worried than too high or too low. He turns his face out properly so Eddie can cup it, and before Eddie soothes him into telling him what’s wrong any longer, he’s seen it, and he already knows.

“It’s really fuckin’ bad, isn’t it?” Richie warbles. 

Eddie’s clean fingers come hovering over those fresh, dark little rows of acne either side Richie’s nose, which seem to have sprung up overnight, as close as he can without hurting his boyfriend. The little ones on the ends of his hands seal under Richie’s curvy jaw, and the thumbs on those peppery freckles under his eyes. This happens every month or so, usually when all the college pressure at school ramps up again, and with those teeny tiny pink pimples always comes a major mood crash. Always a disaster. “Oh, Richie, I toldja to look after yourself this time!” Eddie squeaks. 

“Baby, I did everything you told me to!”

“Did not. You kept stickin’ your face in the mud and I never see you wash it all off, not even before bedtime.”

Richie lets his wonky shoulders slump in acceptance, passing all the weight of his head into Eddie’s steady little hands and letting off a grumpy, snorty noise like a horse. Eyes towards their knees and teeth gnawing his cheeks. Eddie softens himself a teeny tiny bit at this, then rather a lot, pressing a kiss to Richie’s matted curls in spite of his telling-off. “It doesn’t look really bad, I promise it,” comes his quieter approach, right against where the hair parts all tickly. “You look very pretty. A bit like a prince, actually. May I see you again?”

Sweet talker. Sweet as cherries ‘n’ cream. 

His boyfriend’s head comes drawing back up, reluctant and slightly purple from all the blood that he’d sent whooshing down into it. Richie loops a hand out from under his twitchy thighs to hold Eddie’s head right back - copying, again; he always has to copy - and blinks. “How do you get your skin so soft?”

Eddie snickers like how a puppy dog snuffles into your hands, and rolls his eyes. Richie is full of buttery little statements like this. “Oh, cram it. Come on, let’s wash you up, Bubba.”

“I’m being serious, extra super duper serious, how the hell do you manage it?”

Now, in all fairness, this isn’t really much of an exaggeration on Richie’s part; Eddie’s peanut butter cheeks look like they’re made of clean, curly cotton. His freckles are the colour of caramel cup candies and his chin looks like a peach, and sometimes Richie thinks he is most likely the prettiest teenage boy in the world; probably the prettiest up in outer space, too. “Pretty little Chicken,” Mrs. Kaspbrak used to squawk, while spoiling it all in her sticky hands and big, chapped smooches. It took Eddie a little while to stop feeling sick, over his skin, after that. Took him a lot of whispers from Richie and a lot of laced fingers, and a lot of resolute forehead touches, to feel as lovely as he does now. 

“I just wash it and stuff, I don’t know. You’re making me blush!”

“Pretty please? Lemon squeeze?!”

And after a few more bashful little eye rolls and bats at Richie’s shoulder, Eddie finally does cave, and begins a very long and careful little list of various pretty bottled products and teeny tiny tubs he keeps in his backpack. Richie doesn’t take in the barest gist of it for gaping at those pearly cheeks too hard, those toffee pudding lips, but it’s better than itching at his arms some more or fretting over his own face, and by the end of it, he’s even pouted and lash-fluttered his way into Eddie doing it all for him. 

“This is what I keep telling you to do, you silly goose,” Eddie hums, as he twists the top kinks of Richie’s hair up into a scrunchie (which both of them hafta take a five minute break to choke back their giggles over). Fingers covered in spot treatment that smells like eureka lemons and eyes trying to figure out how to smooth it all in without any pain; low threshold, that’s what Richie’s got. “Just give yourself a bit of tender love ‘n’ care next time, okay? You’re always pretty as pie, but you gotta keep yourself feeling it, Rich.”

With several more swipes of milky white lemon, kisses on the tip of the nose and ears and ‘chin up!’ tickles, Richie is certainly feeling pretty as pie. Looking a little bit funny, but Eddie says that’s no change at all, which makes him very giggly, and much less worried. Much more like Richie. He lays his head right back on that happy tummy after making some sandwiches and fruit salad (which consists of only strawberries in a kitty cat dinner dish), and says, “thank you, baby. Thank you and your baby’s butt cheeks.”

Eddie gives his fifth and final eye roll of the day, but not his final kiss at Richie’s head, and certainly not his final blush, and says right back, “you’re welcome, sweetheart.”


End file.
